A defence of Sainte-Beuve is not within the purpose of the present article; but it was impossible for one who has known him favorably for twenty years through his works and the testimony of his most distinguished literary compeers to speak of him at all without protesting against the detraction to which his memory has been subjected. Two small posthumous volumes have lately been issued in France,[C] revealing qualities which might expose the dead man to a mean revenge, though to most readers they will have a delightful freshness unspoiled by any bitter flavor. They consist of a series of notes on all sorts of subjects, literary, dramatic, religious and political, one of them being actually made up of the jottings in his later notebooks, while the other contains the memoranda of a sort of high-class gossip with which Sainte-Beuve supplied a friend, the editor of _La Revue Suisse_, during the years 1843-45. These were not to be published as they stood, but to be used by the editor, M. Juste Olivier, as he should think best: they are fragmentary, mere bits of raw material--if any product of that accomplished brain can be so termed--to be worked up by another hand. They were qualified by marginal observations, such as "This is for you alone," "This is rather strong," and they were to be absolutely anonymous, the author allowing himself the luxury of free speech, of writing exactly as he thought and felt; in short, of trusting his indiscretion to M. Olivier's discretion. The latter used his judgment independently; Sainte-Beuve's views and comments often became merely one ingredient in an article for which others supplied the rest; and the editor kneaded the whole into shape to his own liking. But the MSS. remained intact, and were confided by M. Olivier to M. Jules Troubat, Sainte-Beuve's private secretary and editor, who has published them in their integrity, he tells us, with the exception of "a few indispensable suppressions." The other volume, as we have said, is composed of his notebooks. These last were intended to take the place of memoirs by Sainte-Beuve himself, who wrote a short preface, under the name of M. Troubat, destined for a larger volume to appear after his death. He published, however, the greater part of those which he had already collected in vol. ii. of the _Causeries de Lundi_: the present series contains the notes which accumulated subsequently. M. Troubat has given them to the world as they stood. Both books abound in the characteristics of the author's style--good sense, moderation, perception, discrimination, delicacy, sparkle, unerring taste, as well as judgment in matters of intelligence. A parcel of disconnected passages cannot possess the flow and finish of a complete essay, but each bit has the clearness, incisiveness and smooth polish of his native wit. They give us Sainte-Beuve's first impression, thought, mental impulse, about daily events regarding which he sometimes afterward modified his opinion.